Running scared into an election season

Running scared

Dichter & Neira, the respectable polling firm that has been tracking Panama for many years, did a survey for TVN and found that, for the first time since the depth of the Seguro Social crisis, most Panamanians now have a negative opinion about both the performance of President Martín Torrijos and the course that the country is taking. Other pollsters who use different methodologies have been finding even more marked trends in this direction.

The PRD has yet to choose its candidates, the opposition has yet to forge and solidify its alliances, and in politics there's an eternity between now and next May's general election. We shouldn't make too much of how polls portray the momentary ebbs and flows of public opinion.

However, by all outward indications, the president is taking the polls very seriously indeed. He's in full-time campaign mode, with all the demagogic flourishes.

In the volatile swing-voting Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, where his assault against all notions of indigenous sovereignty over natural resources continues unabated and is backed by reinforced riot squads, Torrijos has seen the need to increase the contents of the envelopes he passes out at his paternalistic political rallies from $35 to $50.

As the Panama City real estate market bubble deflates and many residents begin to realize how ruinous the special assessments to pay for the Costa Cintera are likely to be for them, he casts about for scapegoats and comes up with the bus drivers.

He keeps media and ad agencies that would otherwise be in the red solvent for the time being with massive government advertising that's nothing more than very thinly disguised PRD campaign propaganda.

Still, the almost total media control that the government exercised in the canal expansion referendum has since then promoted new trends away from the boring PRD propaganda outlets to different media. In response to that the PRD-dominated Electoral Tribunal has held a "dialogue" with a few servile pro-PRD Internet sites in a bid to come up with new "agreed upon" rules by which it can muzzle what is published online about the hoodlum political class.

Despite the warning signs, the factions of a PRD that presumes itself invulnerable in 2009 to fight among themselves for the plums they expect to come.

Largely due to expectations of victory the ruling party's junior partner allies are being ignored, insulted and driven away, and media that had slavishly followed the PRD line are now trying to put a bit of distance between themselves and an unpopular government lest they lose all semblance of public credibility.

Much of the party, particularly but not only the Balbina Herrera presidential campaign, harks back to "good old days" with nostalgia for a dictatorship that held power for more than two decades. But those in the party who pay attention to the way things are rather than the way they would wish them to be surely must be concerned that the voters may turn on the PRD and that by this time next year their gravy train will have come screeching to a halt.

Leave it to those inclined to take their protests to the streets to harm their causes through the lack of a coherent political strategy, and leave it to the established opposition parties to shoot themselves in the feet in a mad scramble to fulfill personal and partisan ambitions rather than address the nation's needs. These unfortunate factors are now the principal pillars upon which the PRD's hopes for continuation in office rest.

Make no mistake about it. Things aren't going right for it and the government is running scared, and in its fright and frustration the Torrijos administration may do rash things. Panamanians need to act calmly, deliberately and selflessly over the coming months, even in the face of provocation and annoyance. Let panic spread among the power mad, but don't let it infect the rest of us.

Playing solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51

We can rest reasonably assured that it wasn't malicious, like the Bush administration's outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, as a way to retaliate against her husband's refusal to go along with a lie used to promote the disastrous US adventure in Iraq. But then, given John McCain's complaints of increased risks when his son's military assignment was revealed, we can also reasonably presume that the senator should know the dangers of revealing details of his colleague and Democratic opponent Barack Obama's plans to visit Iraq.

No harm, no foul? Perhaps.

But it does appear that the senator from Arizona, who has committed a series of gaffes on the campaign trail lately, too often goes out in public without all of his wits about him. If he's going to reveal confidences about Obama's itinerary, what other information that a president should guard would McCain negligently reveal?

Bear in mind...

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.

Susan B. Anthony

It is simple, really. Human health and the health of ecosystems are inseparable.

Gro Harlem Brundtland

The roots of violence are wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

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